Oxygène

Quite boring. A weak palette of synthesizer sounds (which I don’t think can be wholly blamed on technology of the era, other people were making interesting sounds), far too many “sound effects” without any apparent meaning or artistic rationale, shallow conception of musical composition. It’s Really Poor, 2/10.

It's very hard to explain what I mean but this is exactly what an album called "Oxygen" should sound like

This is a pretty interesting one. I’ve been meaning to check out Jean-Michel Jarre ever since hearing one of his tracks on a Pure Moods compilation CD way back in the day, and I’m glad I finally did because Oxygène is a really cool album. For 1976, this feels incredibly ahead of its time. Everything is electronic, but it never feels cold or mechanical. It’s dreamy, soothing, relaxing, and incredibly spacey. Honestly, it makes me think of floating through space in some late-’70s or early-’80s B-movie, with this playing over the trailer. And I mean that as a compliment. There are so many strange little electronic sounds and textures throughout that I can only imagine how cutting-edge this must have sounded when it first came out. There are a few stretches where the melodies get pretty sparse and things start to feel repetitive. Some of the sound effects and synth textures also start becoming familiar after a while, to the point where it occasionally feels like the album is running a little low on new ideas. There obviously aren’t many huge, high-energy moments either. This is a very low-key, laid-back album, so I can absolutely understand somebody finding it boring. Thankfully, though, it isn’t especially long, so it never really wears out its welcome. There’s still a lot here that I found interesting, especially when you keep in mind just how early this was for this kind of fully electronic music. Really cool stuff. 4/5

I love this so much, never been easier to give out 5 stars

Just not for me

Cool sounds, but I can’t listen to this

Interesting and good. Enjoyed the sound.

I feel like Daft Punk got ideas from JMJ. This was their prototype.

I can dig ambient stuff, but this is too bleep bloop new age-y for me. I need melodies sorry!!!!

Space-age fart sounds were probably more exciting back in the day.

het moet veel moeite gekost hebben om het gesnurk van de producer er uit te filteren

Good.

этого я не понял что за аудиоприключение очень футуристично, но скучно и меня не цепляет 2.3

I love me some Jean Michel Jarre. This one, while not my favorite is still pretty good.

Track By Track Oxygène, Pt. 1 - It sounds like it could be the opening to a space film/TV show yes, but also a video game. The ambient whirring could be embellishing an adventure game landscape or something. At first, I’m a little indifferent to this music. Oxygène Pt. 2 - A continuation really of pt. 2. Quite good arpeggios climbing. I’m getting laser gun sounds for this one. Like a desolate war scape or something. Also a voyage. Bit more of a beat in this one, like you can move to it a little more. Oxygène Pt. 3 - I’m now thinking it could be the soundtrack to a film like Dune. But the ‘80s one, not the recent one. Does sound very of the time. Can also appreciate this may have sounded groundbreaking when it came out. Oxygène Pt. 4 - This sounds like it is more of a song, or tune rather than soundtrack type music. Nice driving rhythm. Quite dramatic! Decent. Oxygène Pt. 5 - This is like arriving in a new place, onto a lush forest plain or a golden landscape or something similar. Flashes of light sparkle and appear in time with the synth melody notes. It has a feeling of home or relief. More settled. Even though not all of it feels totally resolved. My imagination is acting more vividly now, I feel more immersed in the album’s world at this point. I prefer the slower ambient moments on this record. Didn’t like when it sped up. Oxygène Pt. 6 - Very sparse atmospheric beginning with the weather sounds. This sounds like it’s ascending (but also descending) into space or the sky. Overall Review: This was certainly different! I’d heard of Jarre before but never listened to his music. It was quite nice to immerse myself in. There were pretty moments and can appreciate his very distinctive, contained sound and style. I’m not sure it will be something that I’d listen to again for myself, but can certainly appreciate it in context and as a soundtrack or imaginative tool! 2.4/5 Favourite Songs: Oxygène, Pt. 5

I think you had to be there.

If this is lift music I would take the lift more often This was better than I expected to be honest but I was listening on headphones whilst lying about and web surfing. I can’t imagine sticking this on to my hi-fi for an active listening session but I respect that it was an early pathway synth album that began a whole load of different stuff including some “chill out” music.

I thought I’d be more bored with this one, but it was a pretty cool album. Very futuristic, especially for its time. Though I don’t think I’ll ever listen to it again.

JMJ is a very important part of my musical journey. It’s hard now to explain just how futuristic this was when it appeared. Literally blew my mind as a small child. This album and Equinoxe are foundation stones to my musical tastes. Impossible to give this anything other than a 5.

Atmospheric and iconic (parts 2 and 4 especially), should definitely be on the list, but I don't see myself revisiting. It's good, just not "me" good.

My first thought was, "Oh boy, electronic background sounds," but this proved more aurally interesting than I had imagined. It conjures sci-fi images as it moves smoothly from track to track and wraps up with a track that brings to mind waves caressing the beach. I could listen to this again.

not for me

nice ambience

Gosto mais do conceito que a execução. Estava excited por um álbum deste género, mas acaba por não impressionar

Day 57 Trying to overcome my rapid Francophobia and the good news is I'm not particularly more hateful. I just don't have enough of a good reason to be less hateful. Fav track: Oxygène, Pt. 4

GREAT instrumental LIusten. From smooth ambient sounds to racing thoughts of musical expressions.

This album would compliment a space exploration perfectly however just to listen to its nothing crazy. Not unlistenable like bjork by any means

A little boring for me. It kinda gives me the vibes of background music for a game or something. But I wouldn’t choose to put it on really ever. Cool album cover though.

Sounds way far out for its time, album cover looks iconic too despite it being my first time seeing it. Crazy that 'ambient' could mean this detailed then, sounds so informative to future chilled-out electronic styles.

Ambient French bollocks (praise)

That was/is boring. The third song especially. I like meditative/ambient music. But this was a bit too "spacy". And for what? Who knows... 2 "give me Eno or William Basinski instead" stars.

Good for sampling. Sounds like it was used in samples by Daft Punk

3, but only because it reminds me of Mass Effect

This is an absolute classic. Tons of reviews complain about this being generic or waiting room music, but the entire point is that this guy was so genre defining that the sound became widespread.

somehow i'd never heard this before and i have no idea why cos like, this album feels like it was engineered to make me give it a 5. its so fuckin good. he really was working some magic to make synths sound this good in the mid 70s. wow. not really much point in trying to talk about tracks given its kinda just a continuous piece morohing between different sounds but, what a journey it goes on.. its so like... atmospheric? it definitely feels like it's taking me somewhere. and buddy u better believe im going with.. now that i think about it..... i guess i do vaguely remember part of it being on one of the radio stations in gta 4. so really it's my bad for not looking into it more. hmm.

Ethereal and surprisingly good. A masterpiece to listen to at any time of day and mood.

This album gave me a headache, or if it didn't, it worsened it.

A musical masterpiece or just a bit of twizzly electronica? I feel the latter really 😐

I'm not normally one to complain about this list's attempts at diversity, but even I think it is a bit far to feel the need to include extra planetary contributions.

Why did I need to listen to this? Am I an RPG character walk into a checkpoint?

I guess it is music

Certainly technologically innovative for its time but not terribly interesting of a listen now

An electronica classic. Almost everything that anybody does in just about every genre related to electronic music began as an idea on this album, or with Tangerine Dream during the same era. OXYGENE blew minds and inspired incalculable number of musicians.

1. 4.5 2. 5 3. 4 1. 3.5 2. 4.5 3. 4

I'm getting a weird vibe from this album. On one hand, i'm actually impressed that something like this came out in 1976, on the other hand, im getting a cool video game soundtrack vibe from this. But Mostly, im getting kind of a whatever vibe from this. And that's truly just how i felt listening to this for the most part, like I was waiting for a big payoff, and nothing came of it. Another instance of "pioneering, necessary to know, but not one to revisit. 2/5.

muy flashero que sea del 76, no es mi taza de té!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Still revolutionary. Still an album that doesn't move me much. Important, but pretty boring by today standards.

Electronic, ambient, synth-pop, space music, new-age, electropop.

sure, 2 songs were enough

Pretty decent ambient music.

I listened to this in the car, and for large sections forgot it was on. Not offensive, but didn’t generate any interest from me

Wasn’t in the right frame of mind for this

Fuckin slaps, Jesus H Christ. Reading up on it afterwards was a nice bit of musical history too. Would send someone into a K Hole at 5.39 at an afters, unreal stuff

It's a bit too Tomorrow's World for me

Never underestimate just how groundbreaking this was. Not listened to it for years and so cohesive and immersive.

Perhaps it was my mindset today but no vibes with this one. Sorry jean-michel

MY KINDA MUSIC

Much respect to this guy for coming out with this type of music and that era in revolutionizing electronic music for future artists like Daft Punk. That being said this album was extremely boring and uninteresting

Planetarium music.

- it’s like the background music in a movie - idk if i’m gonna get through all this - not completely terrible though, definitely better than the aphex twin and miles davis albums - i literally skipped a song and it sounded the EXACT same genuinely not even an exaggeration like same timing same notes same EVERYTHING it made me wonder if i actually skipped it so i double checked and i did - didn’t end up listening to the whole thing it was so boring

"Космическая музыка вплывает в деловой наш разговор". Спасибо за space rock, но меня не зацепило, у Ино поприятнее было.

Какая же бумерская прикормка. Не нравится.

Однозначно плюс вайб мьюзик Особенно учитывая год выхода, звучит очень прогрессивно

вроде и концептуально и для того года вообще хорошо, но все таки 3.5

Reading the reviews at night before I go to sleep had me incredibly curious and really looking forward to this one in the morning. I have to admit that sometimes reading the reviews beforehand does bias me before I put an album of the day on. I think I know my tastes well enough to know whenever a "subgenre defining album" is brought up, and there are LOTS of those in this list it seems, I need to prepare my listening accordingly. Post-punk, disco, or trashy pop? It's probably going to be a tough listen. But sometimes I'm very pleasantly surprised. I am not familiar with early electronic music; 70s electronica. This list has been opening my eyes to it though. It's taken some preconceived notions and flipped them for me. So, I go into this one with some anticipation... Ok. So I'm 5 of the 6 tracks in and I'm digging it. It's totally got that 70s-early 80s electro vibe going on. I love the very analog sound. The very real human playing those parts and not just a quantized sequencer. Analog synths + 70s-hip, talented human musician + analog reel-to-reel tape + sexy analog studio toys = pretty cool album It's not an everyday thing. But I could see owning this on vinyl.

It was a little painful to start with as it just sounded like someone experimenting with different instruments. But as the album progressed, I could definitely get into some of the songs. I would say most of it sounds just like most any other electronic music, but then I realized this was released in 1972 and there are some parts of it that sound so familiar, they're either ripped of from, sampled from, or influenced by this record. So I'm going to assume that even though it's very "meh" to me, it was most definitely avant garde and highly influential, so I will give an extra point for that.

Usually I don't enjoy albums that are that much ambient. But I can't stay idle when Pt. 4 is playing.

First Listen; 3; Instrumental electronic album that creates expansive soundscapes. I like the synthesizers, and they are used extremely well to set the mood. I don't know if it is an actual theremin on the first track, but it gives a very eerie, unsteady feeling. Like a lot of other albums on this list, this is something I'd like to come back to again to appreciate. While specific songs and segments don't jump out and stick with me, certainly more of an overall feel that leaves an impression. Favorite Track: Oxygene, Pt. 1

mid at best

This was shite.

Dug the proto Blade Runner vibes

John Carpenter score meets a floppy disk aquarium game meets Plantasia, sprinkle of Napoleon Dynamite. Lots and lots of that wind sound. Would I rather just have a John Carpenter score? Absolutely.

I’ll take this over anymore singer-songwriters

As far as ambient electronica goes this wasn't bad, but I still can't imagine it as anything other than background music. Pleasant to listen to but not something I want to revisit.

Chicken, rice and pea Chicken, rice and pea Chicken, pea and rice Chicken and rice Chicken and rice AND PEA!

Wow, '76? Pretty cool stuff. 100% could see this album being seminal for a lot of the electronic stuff I was listening to in the late 90s. I had a good time with this one.

Epic & understated at the same time, Oxygène is both an aimless, spiritless mess & a dosage of shiftless, unengaged monotony. I mean I get it - Jarre was going for Mike Oldfield & he succeeded in producing a French-electro version of Tubular Bells, w/ laser-beam shots & sounds to boot. To be fair, this record is slightly better than Oldfield's, if only for the brief moments of tranquil contemplation that it provides, but this is really slight - like a 1 to 2 upgrade kind of slight. I think I hate most its pretentious intention to spook - that Jarre must've had self-deceptions of being some cinematic artiste as well as a master of musical innovation. Neither, in my opinion. Not only of its time, but worse, a stilted & unlovable period piece, Oxygène is bad art.

Not for me.

I feel like I’ve heard samples of this here and there, but I’d never actually heard of it. I’m a pretty big fan. This was awesome.

This is perfect at work listening music. It's in the background, but it's interesting. Love this album.

liked it on a plane

Eh

He clearly had his own style, it's just not really for me

Pleasant background noise

This is weird, wild and simultaneously gentle. I like this a lot so far. It’s Halloween and sci-fi all at once. I’m not sure I can tell when one song ends and the next begins. It’s more like an evolution. Like a story unfolding over time.

Solid chill music, definitely from the mid 70s

A good album to have on while studying, or something. It certainly did not offend or upset me, but needless to say it was not that interesting. It strikes me as very European, like that one German band that we've gotten a couple albums from. I think their fascination for synthesizer manifested in a different way than it did in America. I know it's from 1976, but it sounds like it was made by a third grader in GarageBand.

Funny, I had just (within the past few months) remembered Jean-Michel Jarre, after having basically forgotten about him since the 80s or 90s. The album that I knew (and liked) was "Zoolook," from 1984 (which I recommend!); I think Rick heard about it from a friend, and then told me (?). This album is from 1976, so 8 years earlier - and it *sounds* earlier: more primitive, or something, and (thus?) even a bit more dated. This music used to be (and, per Wikipedia, still is, I guess) categorized as (among other things) "new-age," and/or "space music," though I wonder if those terms (and/or that music) is fading out? (2-sentence tangent: When I went back, a few months ago, to listen to "Zoolook" - curious to find out whether it still sounded as cool as I thought I remembered - it sounded, as I recall, both cool AND dated. But also, possibly: if you're exposed to an album when both you and the album are relatively young, and it sounds cool to you, does this provide it and/or you with some sort of partial immunity to it later sounding dated?) ANYWAY, this album, by contrast, is more dated, less cool (and neither it nor I have such early-exposure immunity). And yet, it's still cool, kinda -- and, in 1976 (I was there, so I know!), this would have seemed (been) pretty darn cool. But, anyway, here we are, 50 (!) years later, and we have to rate it in 2026, and so I give it 3 stars, which seems about right for its dated cool. A last thought: when I started the first track, I cringed a little, at how dated it sounded, and feared - briefly - that I might have to give it 2 stars, but, as I listened through, it grew on me, so that now, at the end, I'm comfortable with 3 stars, and somewhat (slightly) tempted by 4 (especially when I try to remember how innovative this would have seemed - been - in 1976). But, anyway, in the end, a solid 3 stars is my rating, here in 2026. (Zoolook, I'm pretty sure, would have gotten at least 4 stars.)

the synths sound nice, but compositionally it's weak would work well as the soundtrack for a space documentary, but as the main act it's disappointing

Well known and always brilliant

I liked this... kind of a sci-fi feel. It was like electronic classical music in a way.

Alveg er það stórmerkilegt að þetta hafi verið búið til árið 1976. Ég elska ekki þessa tónlist, finnst þetta helst til mikið ambient fyrir minn smekk, en ég get ekki annað en dáðst að tilurðinni og þeirri stemningu sem hann nær fram á ekki merkilegri tæki. Auka stjarna fyrir sögulegt mikilvægi, hinar fyrir ágætis tónlist.

i mean interesting ambient album ig? Good to put in the background but felt like a normal space-lofi inspired album. Interesting synths tho. Fav song: NIL?

Oxygene Part 4 is a song that changed music is Europe in the 1970s. The rest of the album is a nice listen. 4/5

A classic.

This is #day749 of my #1001albumsyoumusthearbeforeyoudie challenge, and… this record is a bit like Kraftwerk's Autobahn to me. Essential for what it is, but not something I'd come back to often. This is a 3 out of 5. Looking forward to #day750.

I bet this would go SO hard at the planetarium

Another review wrote that Jarre, like Mike Oldfield, wasn't seen as cool in the way other early ambient/electronic artists are now. I agree, but I think Jarre is streets ahead of Oldfield in terms of talent. Brilliant album.

Felt like I was in a Mega Man video game at times.

Cook album, and impressive considering the tools at the time that the artist had at hand to compose it. Pretty enjoyable electronic ride.